The Black Adder The Foretelling
Blackadder "Within seconds, Henry Tudor will be here at our gates."
Queen "Oh, Edmund, I'm not ready. I haven't had a bath or anything."
Blackadder "Mother, Henry is our enemy. When his men get here they'll brutally ravish you and every woman in the castle."
Queen "I shan't bother to change, then."

The Archbishop
Blackadder "Tell me, Brother Baldrick, what exactly did God do to the Sodomites?"
Baldrick "I dunno, but I can't imagine it was worse than what they used to do to each other."

Queen "The Archbishop of Canterbury is also a naughty little boy whose bottom I had to smack for relieving himself in the font."
King "Well, that was a long time ago."
Queen "It was last Thursday."

Blackadder (reads) "Dear Enemy: I curse you, and hope that something slightly unpleasant happens to you, like an onion falling on your head."
Baldrick "Well, that is the bottom end of the market. They run all the way to this one, for four ducats."
Blackadder (reads) "Dear Enemy: may the Lord hate you and all your kind, may you be turned orange in hue, and may your head fall off at an awkward moment."

The Queen of Spain's Beard
King "Chiswick, remind me to send flowers to the King of France in sympathy for the death of his son."
Chiswick "The one you had murdered, My Lord...?"
King "Yes, that's the fellow."

Percy "Well, it's a famous blue stone, and it comes... from Galveston."
Blackadder "I see. And what about it?"
Percy "Well, My Lord, the Infanta's eyes are bluer than it, for a start."
Blackadder "I see. And have you ever seen this stone?"
Percy "No, not as such, My Lord, but I know a couple of people who have, and they say it's very very blue indeed."
Blackadder "And have these people seen the Infanta's eyes?"
Percy "No, I shouldn't think so, My Lord."
Blackadder "And neither have you, presumably."
Percy "No, My Lord."
Blackadder "So, what you're telling me, Percy, is that something you have never seen is slightly less blue than something else you have never seen."

Translator (for Infanta) "Your nose is smaller than I expected."
Blackadder "I have suffered no similar disappointment."

Blackadder "The Earl of Doncaster, Baldrick, has been riding side-saddle since he was seventeen."
Baldrick "Mm! And who would want to marry the Earl of Doncaster?"
Blackadder "Well, no one wou- Brilliant! Of course! No one would marry the Earl of Doncaster! Except, perhaps, the Duke of Beaufort. Quick, what are we going to do?"
Baldrick "First I'll get you looking right. We just need something effeminate draped around your shoulders."
Blackadder "Either of the Beaufort twins would do."

Queen "Oh, look at the two lovebirds."
Blackadder "One lovebird, and one love elephant."

Witchsmeller Pursuivant
Blackadder (to Baldrick) "You may capture the eagle, but you cannot clip its wings." [the guards return]
Guard #1 "By the way, how's that eagle of yours?"
Guard #2 "Fine. Had a bit of trouble at first, but now I've clipped its wings, no problem."

The Black Seal
Blackadder (to Percy) "You ride a horse rather less well than another horse would. Your brain would make a grain of sand look large and ungainly, and the part of you that can't be mentioned I am reliably informed by women around the court wouldn't be worth mentioning even if it could be."

Blackadder II Bells
Blackadder "I use the word 'man' in its broadest possible sense. For, as we all know, God made man in his own image, and it would be a sad look out for Christians throughout the globe if God looked anything like you, Baldrick."

Percy "Sorry I'm late."
Blackadder "No, don't bother apologizing. I'm sorry you're alive."
Percy "Oh good, I see the target is ready. I'd like to see the Spaniard who could make his way past me."
Blackadder "Well, go to Spain. There are millions of them."

Blackadder "Jane Herrington?"
Percy "Yes."
Blackadder "Jane bury-me-in-a-Y-shaped-coffin Herrington?"
Percy "I... I think maybe there are two Jane Herringtons."
Blackadder "No... Tall, blonde, elegant?"
Percy "Right, that's right."
Blackadder "Goes like a privy door when the plague is in town? Come on, get on with your shot. You'll get over her... I did... So did Baldrick actually."

Blackadder "You're really just an old quack, aren't you?"
Dr. Leech "I'd rather be a quack than a ducky."

Blackadder "Tell me young crone, is this Putney?"
Crone "That it be... that it be..."
Blackadder "'Yes it is', not 'that it be'. You don't have to talk in that stupid voice to me, I'm not a tourist."

Crone "Two things, my lord, must thee know of the Wisewoman. First, she is... a woman! And second, she is..."
Blackadder "Wise?"
Crone "You do know her then?"
Blackadder "No, just a wild stab in the dark which is incidentally what you'll be getting if you don't start being a bit more helpful."

Blackadder "Thank you young crone. Here is a purse of moneys... which I'm not going to give to you."

Blackadder "Excuse me, could you move along please. Look, I'm waiting for my father in law. Last thing I want is some scruffy old beggar blocking the church door, smelling of cabbage."
Father "I am your father in law."
Blackadder "Oh no... alright, how much you want to clear off?"
Kate "Edmund, how could you? He's my father, my only living relative."
Father "Ten pounds should do the trick."

Head
Blackadder "If I have two beans and then I add two more beans, what does that make?"
Baldrick "Umm... a very small casserole?"

Blackadder (on Percy's ruff) "You look like a bird who's swallowed a plate."
Percy "It's the latest fashion actually and as a matter of fact it makes me look rather s-e-xy!"
Blackadder "To another plate-swallowing bird perhaps. If it was blind and hadn't had it in months."

Melchett "Unhappily Blackadder, the Lord High Executioner is dead."
Blackadder "Oh, woe. Murdered of course?"
Melchett "Oddly enough, no. They usually are but this one just got careless one night and signed his name on the wrong dotted line. They came for him while he slept."

Blackadder "A family atmosphere? This is meant to be a plce of pain and misery and sorrow!"
Cook "That's what I mean, sir."
Gaoler "Mistress Ploppy's a bit of a social realist, sir."

Potato
Blackadder "And where would I find him on a Tuesday?"
Walter "Well, if I remember his old habits, he's normally up the Old Sea Dog."
Blackadder "Oh, yes. And where is the Old Sea Dog?"
Walter "Well, on Tuesdays, he's normally in bed with the captain."

Blackadder "Better a lap-dog to a slip of a girl than a... git!"

Money
Percy "It's just over a thousand methinks, and has for years been hidden beyond the wit of any thief..." [Blackadder joins in] "...in an old sock under the squeaky floorboard..." [Baldrick joins in] "...behind the kitchen dresser."
Percy "You've seen it?"
Blackadder "Seen it, pinched it, spent it. And the same goes for the two farthings Balrick thinks he's got hidden inside that mouldy potato."
Baldrick "Oh, bloody hell!"

Bishop "You see, I am a colossal pervert. No form of s-e-xual depravity is too low for me. Animal, vegetable or mineral, I'll do anything to anything."
Blackadder "Ah - fine words for a bishop. Nice to hear the church speaking out for a change on social issues."

Bishop "You fiend! Never before have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded perversity. Have you ever considered a career in the church?"

Beer
Blackadder "It is said, Percy, that civilized man seeks out good and intelligent company so that through learned discourse he may rise above the savage and closer to God."
Percy (delighted) "Yes, I'd heard that."
Blackadder "Personally, however, I like to start the day with a total dickhead to remind me I'm best."

Baldrick "Lord Melchett is very sick."
Blackadder "Really?"
Baldrick "Yes. He's at death's door."
Blackadder "Well, my faithful old reinstated family retainer, let's go and open it for him then!"

Ludwig "You find yourself amusing, Blackadder."
Blackadder "I try not to fly in the face of public opinion."

Melchett "Perhaps some pleasant word game?"
Blackadder "Yes, all right. Make a sentence out of the following words: face - sodding - your - shut."

Queen "It's just like parties I had when I was tiny. We had tea and cakes and venison and then a trip with a couple of little friends to the executions."
Percy "How sweet."
Queen "If I wanted any of my friends executed, that is."

Blackadder the Third Dish and Dishonesty
Pitt the Younger "I now call upon the leader of the opposition to test me on my Latin vocab."

Blackadder "First name?"
Baldrick "Not sure."
Blackadder "You must have some idea."
Baldrick "Well, it might be Sod Off."
Blackadder "What?"
Baldrick "When I used to play in the gutter I used to say to the other snipes 'Hello, my name's Baldrick', and they used to say 'Yes, we know. Sod off, Baldrick.'"

Blackadder "As a special reward, Baldrick, take a short holiday." [no pause] "Did you enjoy it? Right."

Blackadder "I have a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel."

Ink and Incapacity
Blackadder "I believe, sir, that the doctor is trying to tell you that he is happy because he has finished his book. It has apparently taken him ten years."
George "Yes. Well, I'm a slow reader myself."

Blackadder (on Johnson) "I'd bump into cleverer people at a lodge meeting of the Guild of Village Idiots."
Baldrick "That's not what you said when you sent him your navel."
Blackadder "Novel, Baldrick, not navel. I sent him my novel."

Johnson (to George) "Sir! I hope that you are not using this first English dictionary to look up rude words."
Blackadder "Well, I wouldn't be too hopeful - that's what all the other ones will be used for."

Nob and Nobility
Mrs. Miggins "Bonjewer, monsewer. It's French."
Blackadder "So is eating frogs, cruelty to geese and urinating in the street. But that's no reason to inflict it on the rest of us."

Blackadder "We hate the French! We fight wars against them! Did all those men die in vain on the field of Agincout? Was the man who burnt Joan of Arc simply wasting good matches?"

George (on Baldrick) "The chances of me scoring if I look and smell like him are zero."
Blackadder "That's true, sir. We shall return presently to bid you farewell."
Baldrick "Mr. B, I've been having second thoughts about this trip to France."
Blackadder "Oh, why?"
Baldrick "Well, as far as I can see, looking and smelling like this, there's not much chance of me scoring either."

Blackadder (on the Scarlet Pimpernel) "He's the most overrated human being since Judas Iscariot won the AD 31 Best Disciple Competition."

Blackadder "Am I jumping the gun, Baldrick, or are the words 'I have a cunning plan' marching with ill-deserved confidence in the direction of this conversation?"

Sense and Senility
Blackadder "Baldrick, I would like to say how much I will miss your honest, friendly companionship."
Baldrick "Thank you, Mr. B."
Blackadder "But, as we both know, it would be an utter lie. I will therefore confine myself to saying simply 'Sod off, and if I ever meet you again, it will be twenty billion years too soon'." [He leaves.]
Baldrick "Goodbye you lazy, big-nosed, rubber-faced bastard."

Amy and Amiability
Blackadder "One is born, one runs up bills, one dies. And what have I got to show for it. Nothing! A butler's uniform and a slightly effeminate hairdo."

Baldrick "Don't worry mister B, I have a cunning plan to solve the problem."
Blackadder "Yes Baldrick, let us not forget that you tried to solve the problem of your mother's low ceiling by cutting off her head."

Blackadder "You've been cutting out the cuttings about the elusive Shadow to put in your highwayman scrap book, haven't you?"
Baldrick "Oh, I can't help it, Mr. B! His life is so dark and shadowy and full of fear and trepidation!"
Blackadder "So's going to the toilet in the middle of the night but you don't keep a scrap book on it."
Baldrick "Yes I do."

Blackadder "Mrs. M, if we were the last three humans on earth, I would be trying to start a family with Baldrick."

Blackadder "Have you ever been to Wales, Baldrick?"
Baldrick "No, but I've often thought I'd like to."
Blackadder "Well don't, it's a ghastly place. Huge gangs of tough sinewy men roam the valleys terrorising people with their close-harmony singing. You need half a pint of phlegm in your throat just to pronounce the placenames. Never ask for directions in Wales Baldrick, you'll be washing spit out of your hair for a fortnight."

Blackadder Goes Forth Plan A: Captain Cook
Baldrick "My father was a nun."
Blackadder "No he wasn't."
Baldrick "He was so, I know because whenever he was in court and the judge used to say 'occupation' he'd say 'nun'."

Blackadder (to George and Baldrick) "Henceforth I shall pray nightly to the God who killed Cain and squashed Samson that he comes out of retirement and gets back into pracice with the pair of you." [He answers the phone.] "Blackadder. Ah, Captain Darling... You want two volunteers for a mission into No Man's Land. Codename - Operation Certain Death. Yes, I think I have just the fellows." [Hangs up.] "God is very quick these days."

Plan C: Major Star
Blackadder (on Charlie Chaplin) "I find his films about as funny as getting an arrow through the neck and then finding there's a gas bill tied to it.

Blackadder (to Bob) "You are a girl. And you're a girl with as much talent for disguise as a giraffe in dark glasses trying to get into a polar-bears only club."

Blackadder "A war hasn't been fought this badly since Olaf the Hairy, High Chief of all the Vikings, accidentally ordered 80,000 battle helmets with the horns on the inside."

Blackadder "Baldrick, in the Amazonian rain forests their are tribes of Indians as yet untouched by civilisation who have developed more convincing Charlie Chaplin impressions that yours."

Blackadder (to George) "You were the least convincing female impressionist since Tarzan went through Jane's handbag and ate her lipstick."

Blackadder "Trust you to skive off to some cushy option."
Darling "There is nothing cushy about life in the Women's Auxiliary Balloon Corps."

Blackadder "The Teutonic reputation for brutality is well founded. Their operas last three or four days and they have no word for 'fluffy'."

Richthoven "Ah, and Lord Flashheart, this is indeed an honour. Finally the two greatest gentlemen flyers in the vorld meet. Two men of honour who have jousted together in the cloud-strewn glory of the skies are face to face at last. How often have I rehearsed this moment of destiny in my dreams. The valour we two encapsulate, the unspoken nobility of our comradeship, the..." [Flashheart shoots him dead.]
Flashheart "What a poof! Let's go!"

Plan E: General Hospital
Blackadder "I spy with my bored little eye something beginning with... 't'."
Baldrick "Breakfast."
Blackadder "What?"
Baldrick "My breakfast always begins with tea, thenI have a little sausage. Then an egg with some little soldiers."
Blackadder "When I say it begins with 't', I meant a letter."
Baldrick "No, it never begins with a letter, the postman don't come until 10.30."

Percy "I'm as British as Queen Victoria!"
Blackadder "You mean your father's German, you're half German and you married a German?"

Mary "Do you have someone special in your life?"
Blackadder "Well, yes I do, as a matter of fact."
Mary "Who?"
Blackadder "Me."
Mary "No, someone you love and cherish and want to keep safe from all the horror and the hurt?"
Blackadder "Still me, really."

Plan F: Goodbyeee
Baldrick (on the war) "I heard it started when some chap called Archie Duke shot an ostich because he was hungry."
Blackadder "I think you mean it started when the Arch-Duke of Austro-Hungary got shot."
Baldrick "No, there was definitely an ostrich involved."

Blackadder "The idea was to have two vast opposing armies, each acting as the other's deterent. That way there could never be a war."
Baldrick "Except, well, this is a sort of war, isn't it?"
Blackadder "That's right, there was one tiny flaw in the plan."
George "Oh, what was that?"
Blackadder "It was bollocks."

Baldrick (on joining up) "It was great - the first time I've ever really felt popular, everyone was cheering and throwing flowers, a gril actually came up and kissed me."
Blackadder "Poor woman - first casualty of the war."

Blackadder "Both sides advanced further during one Christmas piss-up than we've managed in the next two and a half years."
Baldrick "Sir, sir, do you remember the football match sir?"
Blackadder "Remember it, how could I forget it? I was never offside, I could not believe that decision."

Blackadder "I think the phrase rhymes with 'clucking bell'."

Percy "Made a note in my diary on the way here. Says simply 'ber'."

Blackadder's Christmas Carol

Blackadder "Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a cunning plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing 'Cunning plans are here again'."

The Black Adder

(episodes 1-5)

The sound of hoof beats 'cross the glade,
Good folk, lock up your son and daughter,
Beware the deadly flashing blade,
Unless you want to end up shorter.
Black Adder, Black Adder, he rides a pitch black steed.
Black Adder, Black Adder, he's very bad indeed.
Black: his gloves of finest mole,
Black: his codpiece made of metal,
His horse is blacker than a vole,
His pot is blacker than his kettle.
Black Adder, Black Adder, with many an cunning plan.
Black Adder, Black Adder, you horrid little man.

"The Black Seal" (episode 6)
So now the wage of sin is paid,
The blameless dead, the black steed grazes.
The only sound across the glade
Is Edmund pushing up the daisies.
Black Adder, Black Adder, a shame about the plan.
Black Adder, Black Adder, tha' worked, you horrid man.

Blackadder II

"Bells"
Lord Flashheart tweaked the Adder's beard.

From now he always shall be single.
To fall in love with boys is weird,
Especially boys without a dingle.
Black Adder, Black Adder, his taste is rather odd.
Black Adder, Black Adder, the randy little sod.
Lord Flashheart, Lord Flashheart, I wish you were the star.
Lord Flashheart, Lord Flashheart, you're sexier by far.

"Head"
His great-grandfather was a king,
Although for only thirty seconds.
When put in charge of beheading,
He felt that fame and glory beckoned.
Black Adder, Black Adder, no such blooming luck.
Black Adder, Black Adder, Elizabethan shmuck.
Black Adder, Black Adder, nothing goes as planned.
Black Adder, Black Adder, life deals him a bum hand.

"Potato"
Sir Francis and Sir Walter had
Discovered new worlds and new nations.
And though Black Adder thought them mad,
He tried his hand at navigation.
Black Adder, Black Adder, he saw the ocean's foam.
Black Adder, Black Adder, he should have stayed at home.
Black Adder, Black Adder, he heard the new world's call.
Black Adder, Black Adder, discovered ber-all.

"Money"
Take heed the moral of this tale:
Be not a borrower or lender.
And if your finances do fail,
Make sure your banker's not a bender.
Black Adder, Black Adder, he trusted in the church.
Black Adder, Black Adder, it left him in the lurch.
Black Adder, Black Adder, his life was almost done.
Black Adder, Black Adder, who gives a toss? No one.

"Beer"
Black Adder couldn't hold his beer.
The art of boozing he's not mastered.
And I, your merry balladeer,
Am also well and truly plastered.
Black Adder, Black Adder, a bit like Robin Hood.
Black Adder, Black Adder, but nothing like as good.
Black Ad, Black Adder, I thought that he had died.
Black Adder, Black Adder, our writers must have lied.

"Chains"
Beware all ye who lust for fame.
The path of life is most uncertain.
Prince Ludwig thought he'd won the game.
But now the Kraut's gone for a burton.
Black Adder, Black Adder, he beat the Hun by luck.
Black Adder, Black Adder, he's smarter than a duck.
Lord Melchett, Lord Melchett, intelligent and deep.
Lord Melchett, Lord Melchett, a shame about the sheep.